Focal Press Why the Theatre Is So Vital: Personal Essays, College Teachers, Actors, Directors, Playwrights

Introduction: Why?

Sidney Homan

Part 1: The Creative Role of the Audience

1. Vouchsafe Me Audience

Nick Hutchison

2. Training the Eye

S. P. Cerasano

3. Undeveloped Freight: Listening Together in the Playhouse

Robert Price

4. A Shakespeare Professor Becomes a Playgoer

Alan C. Dessen

5. Acting the Storm: Twenty Years of Tempests

June Schlueter

6. From Theatre to Classroom: Making Teaching Effective

Fred Kiefer

Part II: The Life of the Actor, Director, and Playwright in Performance

7. Why the Theatre? Breaking of the Fourth Wall

Gary Lagden

8. Play, Devising, and the Creative Process

Brian Rhinehart

9. I Am Thrilled by an Impure Theatre

Sidney Homan

10. In the Nick: Theatre in and of Our Times

Jerry Harp

11. "The Play" May Not Be "The Thing"—But Something Is

Erica Terpening-Romeo

12. Why Butoh Theatre: Thoughts of the Actor, Questions From the Director Yokko ( Yoshiko Sienkiewicz ) and Brian Rhinehart

13. Amateur Hour, or Notes From a Hack Playwright

Paul Menzer

Part III: When the Theatre Moves Beyond the Stage Into the Real World

14. Theatre for Health

Joanna Howarth

15. Why Make Theatre in the South Pacific? A Personal View of Theatre in Aotearoa/New Zealand

David O’Donnell

16. Empathy Is Essential

Kristin Kundert

17. The Art of Failure

Katherine McGerr

18. Why Teach Theatre?

Gina MacKenzie

19. Making Theatre Around the World, and What It Has Taught Me

Avra Sidiroupoulou

Part IV: Theories and Thoughts About What the Theatre Can Do When Given Form Onstage

20. The Cruelty Tourist and the Emancipated Spectator: Looking for an Essential Theatre

Ralf Remshardt

21. Theatre and the Digital Native

Donna Soto-Morettini

22. Remembering Dreams

Fran Teague

23. Theatrical Pleasure and Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel

Joseph Candido

24. Yeat's "Lapis Lazuli" as Theatrum Mundi

Daniel T. O’Hara

25. Why (Not) Theatre? Stage, Screen, and Streaming in a Pandemic

Patrick Hart

26. Because Cary M. Mazer

Epilogue: "Yeh, Boss"

Sidney Homan

Sidney Homan is Professor of English at the University of Florida and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars. An actor and director in professional and university theatres, he is the author or editor of 18 books on Shakespeare and the modern playwrights.